Man Jailed For Trying to Sell Secrets

Published 6:00 pm, Thursday, April 3, 2003

A former aircraft engineer for a British defense company was sentenced Friday to 10 years in prison for trying to sell secrets about the country's stealth cruise missile program to Russia.

Judge Michael Hyam told Ian Parr, 45, that the sentence had to reflect "public abhorrence" to acts which betrayed the safety and interests of the state.

The defense information Parr stole from British Aerospace Ltd. included details about the "Storm Shadow" long-range stealth cruise missile, which has been used for the first time in the current Iraq conflict.

"You knew perfectly well the nature of what you were doing," Hyam said as he gave the sentence at the Old Bailey criminal court. "I cannot accept that you were so naive that you did not know what you were doing was a risk to the nation's security."

Parr pleaded guilty last year to two counts of espionage under Britain's Official Secrets Act and seven charges of theft. The maximum penalty for a violation of the secrecy act is 14 years in prison.

Prosecutor Aftab Jafferjee told the court that the current climate "graphically illustrated" the need to prevent such security breaches.

"The Storm Shadow documents demonstrate the damaging consequences of compromising such classified information to the operational effectiveness of British forces currently engaged in Iraq," he said.

Parr was arrested at a pub in March 2002 while trying to sell secret documents for $200,000 to a man he believed was Russian. The contact was actually an agent for Britain's domestic intelligence service, MI5.

The engineer was arrested as he finished his pint of lager.

Hyam said that Parr acted for the money but accepted but may have done it out of anger. Parr's employer had told him he might be laid off from the company, where the father of two had worked for 15 years.

The Official Secrets Act makes it a crime to disclose without permission any defense- or intelligence-related information affecting national security.

BAE Systems Avionics is one of the largest companies of its kind in Europe. It produces civil and military electronic systems, including radar for fighter jets like the Tornado and Sea Harrier.